I suspect that the rest of the country will, in fact, have to learn this lesson the hard way. All things depending, of course. George II Fraudulency may have yet another moment of pause if he realizes that his faith based initiatives may wind up funding the Mormon church. (They somehow baptize Holocaust victims in Utah when they die--in fact, it seems that if you die within Utah's borders, you may well get baptized into the LDS church whether you want it or not; the statement about the author's mother futilely trying to find some way to prevent being baptized when she dies is horrifying, and I'm not at all religious.)
You might be surprised to learn that the Mormon Church has teams of men and women microfilming records of Catholic and Protestant parishes, cemetery records, birth and death certificates--virtually any sort of record pertaining to past generations. Temple Mormons hope, in time, to have all of the dead of previous generations baptized posthumously into the Mormon Church. The idea behind baptism for the dead is this: God wants each of us to be with him in glory. To effect this, he allows us to accept the Mormon gospel here on earth. If we don't, he sends us to a "spirit prison" until the Mormon gospel has been preached to us there and we convert. (NOTE: This comes from a site called "Catholic Answers", so it may be a tad slanted. Judge for yourself.)
Replies: 1 Comment
Yeah, one perversely beneficial side effect of that policy is that the Mormon church is a great resource for genealogical information for people of all backgrounds. My parents are firm atheists, and we're not descended from any Mormons, but my mom has contacted the Mormon church on more than one occasion in her genealogical research.
Posted by Mark @ 05/09/2001 04:12 PM CST
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
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12/17/2001: new resolve
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12/17/2001: polluters ho!